For a Little While: New and Selected Stories

Long considered one of the most gifted practitioners of the short story, Rick Bass is unsurpassed in his ability to perceive and portray the enduring truths of the human heart. Now, at last, we have the definitive collection of stories, new and old, from the writer Newsweek has called "an American classic."To read his fiction is to feel more alive-connected, incandescently, to "the brief longshot of having been chosen for the human experience," as one of his characters puts it.These pages reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements, and his lush and striking language draws us ineluctably into the lives of these engaging people and their vivid surroundings. The intricate stories collected in For A Little While--brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery--have the power both to devastate and to uplift. Together they showcase an iconic American master at his peak.Table of Contents Selected Stories (pp 3 - 342) Wild Horses In Ruth’s Country Red Fish The Watch The Legend of Pig-Eye The History of Rodney Fires Field Events The Hermit’s Story The Fireman Swans Elk Pagans The Canoeists Goats Her First Elk Titan The Lives of RocksNew Stories (pp 343 - 468) How She Remembers it The Blue Tree Lease Hound The River in Winter Coach An Alcoholic’s guide to Peru & Chile Fish StoryAcknowledgments